far in the passion of love than any bird of prey that ever bathed its beak in blood, throttle the fiends that with their heavy wings would fain flap her down the cliffs, and hold up her child in deliverance before the eye of the all-seeing God?

9. No stop-no stay; she knew not that she drew her breath. Beneath her feet Providence fastened every loose stone, and to her hands strengthened every root. How was she ever to descend? That fear but once crossed her heart, as she went up-up-up-to the little image of her own flesh and blood. "The God who holds me now from perishing, will not the same God save me when my child is on my bosom?"

10. Down came the fierce rushing eagles' wings-each savage bird dashing close to her head, so that.she saw the yellow of their wrathful eyes. All at once they quailed and were cowed. Yelling, they flew off to the stump of an ash, jutting out of a cliff, a thousand feet above the cataract; and the Christian mother, falling across the eyrie, in the midst of bones and blood, clasped her child -dead-dead-dead, no doubt, but unmangled and untorn, and swaddled up just as it was when she laid it down asleep among the fresh hay in the nook of the harvest field.

11. Oh, what a pang of perfect blessedness transfixed her heart from that faint, feeble cry: "It lives! it lives! it lives!" and, baring her bosom with loud laughter and eyes dry as stones, she felt the lips of the unconscious innocent once more murmuring at the fount of life and love! "O Thou great and Thou dreadful God! whither hast Thou brought me, one of the most sinful of Thy creatures? Oh! save my soul, lest it perish, even

132

for Thy own name's sake! O Thou, who diedst to save sinners, have mercy upon me!"

12. Below were cliffs, chasms, blocks of stone, and the skeletons of old trees--far, far down, and dwindled into specks-and a thousand creatures of her own kind, stationary or running to and fro! Was that the sound of the waterfall, or the faint roar of voices? Is that her native strath?-and that tuft of trees, does it contain the hut in which stands the cradle of her child? Never more shall it be rocked by her foot! Here must she die; and when her breast is exhausted, her baby too! And those horrid beaks, and eyes, and talons, and wings will return, and her child will be devoured at last, even within the dead bosom that can protect it no more.

John Wilson.

FOR PREPARATION.-I. Professor John Wilson, of Edinburgh University. In what In 1822 he published "Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life." He wrote Christopher North." much for Blackwood, under the name of " country is the scene of this piece laid? What words tell this? (ta'en for taken, puir for poor, bairn and wean for child, wee for little, etc.).

II. Explain spelling and pronunciation of whis'-tle (hwis'l), shriek (shreek), ey'-rie (a'ry or e'ry), wring'-ing (ring'-), eliffs, sta'-tion-a-ry (-shun-), un-eon'-scious, in'-no-çent, jõe'-und, sǎe'-ra-ment.

III. Explain apostrophe in "o'clock." What word is used for the feminine of lad?-of man? Why is a capital letter used in the following cases: great Being (2), Providence (9), Father (6)? Find more words spelled with "It lives" (11)-whose words are these? capitals for the same reason.

IV. Give the meaning in your own words of wains, sward, jocund, "tree gnomons" (the shadows of the trees told the time of day, like dials), "graces were pronounced," mantling, talons, copse, shingle, essaying, discomfiture, dilapidated, decrepitude, dwindled, chasms, quailed, cowed, transfixed.

"A congre V. "Bullion bars of butter" (shape and color like gold bars?). "Female shriek "-how does a female's shriek differ from any other? (3)-why just at that time? Select the sentences in gation at a sacrament" which the author makes us know the season of the year, the time of day, and the features of the landscape. See note to LXXXV. in regard to the

Coult pieces

LIII. THE DESCENT FROM THE EAGLE'S NEST.

1. Where, all this time, was Mark Stewart, the sailor? Halfway up the cliffs. But his eye had got dim and his heart sick; and he, who had so often reefed the topgallant sail, when at midnight the coming of the gale was heard afar, covered his face with his hands, and dared look no longer on the swimming heights.

2. "And who will take care of my poor, bedridden mother?" thought Hannah, whose soul, through the exhaustion of so many passions, could no more retain in its grasp that hope which it had clutched in despair. A voice whispered, "God." She looked around, expecting to see an angel, but nothing moved, except a rotten branch, that, under its own weight, broke off from the crumbling rock. Her eye, by some secret sympathy of her soul with the inanimate object, watched its fall; and it seemed to stop not far off, on a small platform.

3. Her child was bound within her bosom she remembered not how or when, but it was safe; and, scarcely daring to open her eyes, she slid down the shelving rocks, and found herself on a small piece of firm, root-bound soil, with the tops of bushes appearing below. With fingers suddenly strengthened into the power of iron, she swung herself down, by brier, and broom, and heather, and dwarf birch. Here, a loosened stone leaped over a ledge; and no sound was heard, so profound was its fall. There, the shingle rattled down the screes, and she hesitated not to follow.

4. Her feet bounded against the huge stone that stopped them, but she felt no pain. Her body was cal lous as the cliff. Steep as the upright wall of a house was now the side of the precipice. But it was matted

154

with ivy centuries old, long ago dead, and without a single green leaf, but with thousands of arm-thick stems, petrified into the rock, and covering it as with a trellis. She bound her baby to her neck, and, with hands and feet, clung to the fearful ladder.

5. Turning round her head and looking down, lo! the whole population of the parish-so great was the multitude on their knees! and, hush! the voice of psalms! a hymn, breathing the spirit of one united prayer! Sad and solemn was the strain, but nothing dirge-like, breathing not of death, but deliverance. Often had she sung that tune, perhaps the very words-but them she heard not-in her own hut, she and her mother; or in the kirk, along with the congregation.

6. An unseen hand seemed fastening her fingers to the ribs of ivy; and, in sudden inspiration, believing that her life was to be saved, she became almost as fearless as if she had been changed into a winged creature. Again her feet touched stones and earth; the psalm was hushed, but a tremulous, sobbing voice was close beside her, and lo! a she-goat, with two little kids, at her feet! "Wild heights," thought she, "do these creatures climb, but the dam will lead down her kid by the easiest paths; for, oh! even in the brute creatures, what's the holy power of a mother's love!" and, turning round her head, she kissed her sleeping baby, and for the first time she wept.

7. Overhead frowned the front of the precipice, nevei before touched by human hand or foot. No one had ever dreamed of scaling it; and the golden eagles knew that well, in their instinct, as, before they built their eyrie, they had brushed it with their wings. But all the rest of this part of the mountain side, though scarred and

wes vet accessible; and more than